Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for April, 2004
April 30, 2004 at 6:38 pm · Filed under Other
The President’s Commission on Moon, Mars, and Beyond has released the agenda for its final public hearing, scheduled for Monday and Tuesday in New York. The hearing will feature two sessions on international issues, two on science (lunar “and other space science” and astrophysics), as well as sessions on sustainability, media, business, and space advocacy organizations (called “Space to the People!”). Sean O’Keefe is scheduled to speak Tuesday afternoon, just before audience comments, a press conference, and “deliberations of commissioners”.
April 30, 2004 at 9:51 am · Filed under Campaign '04
Over at an earlier posting about Kerry’s voting record on NASA, Bill Turner has supplied the text of an email message he received from the Kerry campaign about the candidate’s view on space programs. There’s not much detail in the message, and the link provided to a December 2003 speech he gave at Stanford mentions NASA only in passing. One thing that did strike me is that the message specifically mentions Kerry’s support for the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Is this because Kerry has a fondness for x-ray astronomy, or is it because the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center is located in Cambridge, MA?
April 29, 2004 at 3:58 pm · Filed under Other
In an essay published Thursday, SPACE.com science writer Robert Roy Britt comments on the lack of support for the new space initiative within Congress, bringing up a number of points discussed here and elsewhere recently. He also notes recent reports that the bulk of the budget increase NASA has asked for will go to support the shuttle and station programs, rather than the initiative. Britt wonders if that money is well-spent:
While the body tasked with overseeing NASA’s internal overhaul in the wake of the Columbia disaster investigation, the Stafford-Covey Task Group, says the agency is completing the steps needed to launch the orbiters, engineers dealing with the day-to-day work of retrofitting and repairing the aging fleet have a dimmer view. The longer they work to fix the flawed spacecraft, the more problems they find. They may be safeguarding the fleet straight into the Smithsonian.
Meanwhile, Frank Sietzen, writing for UPI, also argues that “interest by the public and politicians has failed to ignite.” He notes that there appears to have been a lack of a strategy to promote the plan once it was announced in January, an assessment others—myself included—concur with. (Quote: “‘They thought that we would just stand up and salute,’ one congressional staffer lamented.”) One professor quoted in the article argues that the cost and “grimness” of the Iraq war has made many wary of supporting something as “frivolous” as space exploration. John Pike is quoted in the article arguing that the plan is a scheme by the Bush Administration to abandon manned spaceflight, a claim that seems difficult to support.
April 27, 2004 at 11:37 pm · Filed under Other
While I have been skeptical of claims of an imminent US-China space race, others, like Mark Whittington, have not. However, a more important issue might be the perception of competition, Dwayne Day argues in a new article from The Space Review. Increased spending on civilian space activities, such as manned spaceflight, takes funding and other resources that could be used for other activities, notably military programs. This can even be accomplished without even the perception of competition, by instead engaging China in cooperative ventures. It’s a compelling argument, although one could counter that China could manage to fund both civilian space and military programs fully by taking money from other areas, although that too could have consequences.
April 27, 2004 at 10:30 pm · Filed under Other
The New York Times published an article Tuesday about concerns some scientists have about the new exploration initiative. While a lot of attention has been given to NASA’s decision to cancel the final shuttle Hubble servicing mission—not directly related to the initiative—the plan also calls for cutting some space and earth science budgets, including deferring some missions in the Beyond Einstein program that was unveiled just last year. That program includes an effort to look for evidence of dark matter, a goal that a panel that included representatives from NASA concluded was of the highest priority. One thing the article doesn’t point out, though, is that all the attention given to Hubble may be hurting these programs: with everyone focused on trying to either restore the servicing mission or find other alternatives, the hurdles these other programs face have been largely ignored. Indeed, one can imagine that if NASA does find a way to robotically service Hubble, some of the money to pay for that effort could come out of the space science program, further hurting some of these missions.
April 26, 2004 at 2:18 pm · Filed under Congress
The Senate Commerce Committee’s web site now lists the hearing scheduled for Tuesday on “International Space Exploration Program.” The hearing is scheduled for 3:30 pm in Russell 253, and will be webcast. The witnesses include the three mentioned here previously (Grahn, Logsdon, and Oberg), as well as Marcia Smith of the Congressional Research Service.
April 23, 2004 at 11:00 am · Filed under Congress
According to a source, the space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing next Tuesday on unmanned lunar missions being planned, or are already in progress, by several other nations. The preliminary list of witnesses includes:
- John Logsdon of GWU (discussing Japanese missions)
- James Oberg (on Chinese plans)
- Sven Grahn of Swedish Space Corp (on ESA’s SMART-1 mission launched last year)
The hearing information hasn’t been posted to the committee’s web site yet, but should be there soon.
April 22, 2004 at 4:46 am · Filed under Congress
While there was some confusion about the time, location, and even existence of a House Appropriations Committee subcommittee hearing on NASA’s budget, the hearing did in fact occur. NASA released the opening remarks by Sean O’Keefe in that hearing, but the bigger news was the concern raised by leading committee members about the budget. Subcommittee chairman James Walsh (R-NY) and ranking member Alan Mollohan (D-WV) both noted that they felt it would be difficult to get the full budget increase NASA asked for, according to reports by the Orlando Sentinel and Houston Chronicle. Walsh and Mollohan said they were unwilling to fight for that increase given the many unanswered questions about the exploration effort. Florida Today reported that O’Keefe responded by saying most the proposed increase would be used to return the shuttle to flight and resume assembly of the station. Without that increase, he warned, the shuttle safety effort “all becomes very compromised”.
April 22, 2004 at 4:34 am · Filed under Congress
At the AIAA International Policy Seminar on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), chairman of the House Science Committee, made it clear that he felt NASA would not get the full budget increase the President requested. The full text of the speech is on the House Science Committee site, and I have a condensed but detailed summary in Spaceflight Now (complete with action photo!). For more impatient folks, here are a few key points:
- Noting the tight budget environment, where most programs are getting little or no increases, Boehlert asked, “In such a budget, should NASA receive almost a 6 percent increase? Is it the highest domestic spending priority? I don’t think so, and I doubt my colleagues will either.”
- Boehlert approves of the “broad outlines” of the exploration plan, including completing the station and retiring the shuttle. His concerns are with the cost and schedule of the plan; he noted, for example, that he thought it was unrealistic to complete the station by 2010 because it would involve flying the shuttle five times a year, while the CAIB recommended a flight rate of four a year.
- He is also concerned with cuts in other NASA programs, including earth and space sciences. Quote: “Do I think that it’s more important to know more about the Earth than it is to know more about Mars? I do, and I don’t think it’s a close question.”
- The House Science Committee staff is working on an alternative budget that would restore some of those cuts while allowing exploration programs to get started, he said.
- A NASA authorization bill will be introduced in the House around July 4th, and will move through the House in September. A Senate version of the legislation will be introduced “pretty soon”.
- Don’t expect Congress to approve a NASA budget until after Election Day, forcing NASA to operate on continuing resolutions for over a month, and perhaps several months.
On Thursday Bill Adkins, staff director for the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee, will likely touch on these topics during a luncheon meeting of the local AIAA chapter in downtown Washington.
April 21, 2004 at 11:52 pm · Filed under Campaign '04
The reelection web site for President Bush has introduced a new feature, “Journeys with John”, that attempts to show on a state-by-state basis why John Kerry is wrong on some of the issues. For Florida (one of only two states included to date) one of the topics is titled “Cutting NASA Funding”:
In 1995, Kerry Introduced A Bill That Included Termination Of International Space Station Program. Kerry’s budget bill, which included defense and intelligence cuts, sought to cut $11 billion from the International Space Station Program, thus terminating it. The bill had no co-sponsors and never made it to the floor for a vote.
The section refers to S.1290, a bill introduced by Kerry in September 1995 that called for a wide range of defense and other discretionary program cuts to reduce the deficit, including “Terminate the International Space Station Program”. The bill was referred to committee, where it died. As noted previously, Kerry had been an opponent of the space station program through the mid-1990s. However, not surprisingly, the snippet on the Bush site doesn’t point out that more recently (after about 1996), Kerry has supported the ISS program.
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